自2024年成为共和党副总统候选人以来，万斯的策略是让特朗普总统册封他为继任者。“唐纳德·特朗普最终将决定谁将成为共和党提名人，”万斯上个月对肖恩·斯派塞说，巧妙地将初选选民从决策矩阵中剔除。
D. Vance’s strategy, since he became the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2024, has been for President Trump to coronate him as his successor. “Donald Trump will ultimately decide who’s going to be the Republican nominee,” Vance told Sean Spicer last month, neatly excising the primary electorate from the decision matrix.
然而，中期选举结果表明，共和党选民中存在一个市场，渴望一位2028年总统候选人能将其竞选活动与现任政府的失败划清界限。万斯想成为那位共和党人，但又不愿放弃特朗普的支持。他如何两全其美？
Yet the midterm elections indicate the existence of a market among Republican voters for a 2028 presidential candidate who will distance their campaign from the current administration’s failures. Vance wants to be that Republican, but without forfeiting Trump’s support. How does he manage to do both?
把一切归咎于伊朗战争。万斯狡猾地——尽管不诚实地——正是这么做的。
Blame everything on the Iran war. That is what Vance shrewdly, if disingenuously, has done.
在X平台上的一篇长文中，副总统完全承认其党遭遇惨败，并称“许多在2024年投给特朗普/万斯票的人在2026年投给了民主党人”。分析人士常把2024年共和党总统选民简称为“特朗普选民”，但万斯理所当然地避免使用这种简略说法。
In a lengthy post on X, the vice president fully conceded that his party had been routed, and that “many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.”You often see analysts describing the 2024 Republican presidential electorate as “Trump voters,” but Vance understandably avoided this shorthand.
他将这场灾难归结为单一原因，写道：“我们输掉选举的原因是战争。总统昨晚亲口这么说的。”这一论点有几个优势。首先，它部分属实。伊朗战争在政治上是一场惨败，既因为它违背了特朗普屡次承诺的避免陷入泥潭，也因为它推高了燃料和其他商品的成本。
He reduced the disaster to a single cause, writing: “The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.”This argument has several advantages. First, it is partially correct. The Iran war has been a political debacle, both because it violated Trump’s oft-stated promise to avoid quagmires and because it drove up the cost of fuel and other goods.
其次，且同等重要的是，特朗普很可能认同这一批评。这位总统已公开指责伊朗数月之久，同时又辩解称代价微不足道、只是暂时的（自冲突爆发以来，结束冲突一直“只差两周”），且为避免核灾难所必需。在昨晚接受福克斯新闻采访时，特朗普坚称：“我们实际上拥有最强劲的经济”，但“由于汽油价格，人们感受不到这一点，不像没有这场冲突时那样明显。而汽油价格上涨是伊朗造成的。”
Second, and of equal importance, Trump likely agrees with this critique. The president has been publicly blaming Iran for months, while defensively insisting that the cost has been minor, temporary (the conflict has been two weeks away from ending since it began), and necessary to avoid nuclear cataclysm. In a Fox News interview last night, Trump insisted, “We actually have the greatest economy,” but “because of the gasoline price, people don’t see it as much as they would have without it. And the gasoline was caused by Iran.”
唐纳德·特朗普二世迅速转发了万斯的帖子，并评论道：“字字句句都是”，为万斯的让步盖上了王室准官方的认可印章。
Donald Trump Jr. quickly shared Vance’s post, commenting, “Every word of this is ,” stamping the royal family’s quasi-official imprimatur on Vance’s concession.
第三，万斯的论点意在排挤他最有力的竞争对手、国务卿马尔科·鲁比奥。如果战争才是问题所在，那么为什么有人会更倾向于一位全职负责外交政策的内阁官员？鲁比奥是众所周知的外交政策鹰派，指责鹰派哄骗特朗普犯下错误，等于将中期选举的惨败归咎于党内的鲁比奥派系。
Third, Vance’s argument aims to box out his most likely rival, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. If the war is the problem, then why would anybody prefer a Cabinet official whose entire job is foreign policy? Rubio is a well-known foreign-policy hawk, and blaming the hawks for snookering Trump into a mistake implicates the Rubio wing of the party for the midterm debacle.
第四，万斯无视特朗普瓦解2024年共和党联盟的所有其他方式。关税？大规模驱逐移民？腐败？镀金宫殿般的挥霍狂欢？一个以削减富人税收为核心的国内议程，同时却让数百万低收入美国人失去医保和食品券？特朗普不愿在这任何一项上承认错误，而万斯无论如何要么为这些错误辩护，要么热烈支持。
Fourth, Vance ignores every other way Trump dismantled the 2024 Republican coalition. Tariffs? Mass deportation? Corruption? The gilded-palace binge? A domestic agenda focused on cutting taxes for the rich, while throwing millions of low-income Americans off their health insurance and food stamps? Trump is not willing to cop to mistakes on any of them, and Vance either justified or enthusiastically supported all of these errors, anyway.
在他的 X 平台帖子中，万斯专门试图反驳共和党批评者——他们（正确地）认为政府对移民执法采取铁腕手段，疏远了原本指望采取更窄范围、重点遣返罪犯做法的拉美裔选民。“预计会听到各种建制派政客声称，解决我们困境的办法是大赦，”万斯写道。“我对我们应改变执法方式持开放态度——例如更多地关注雇佣非法劳工的企业。但任何推行大赦的人都在欺骗你。”
In his X post, Vance specifically tried to refute Republican critics who (correctly) believe that the administration’s ironfisted approach to immigration enforcement alienated Latino voters who had expected a narrower approach focused on deporting criminals. “Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty,” Vance wrote. “I’m open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.”
“大赦”并非斯蒂芬·米勒那套部署仓促受训的蒙面特工、并鼓励他们使用最粗暴手段的方案的唯一替代选择。但大赦曾是鲁比奥在奥巴马第二任期期间短暂支持的一项移民改革方案的特征，这一历史事实或许能解释万斯为何急于重提这一概念——作为攻击其派系对手的贬义词。
“Amnesty” is not the only alternative to Stephen Miller’s plan of deploying hastily trained masked agents and encouraging them to use the roughest tactics. But amnesty was a feature of an immigration-reform plan that Rubio briefly supported during Barack Obama’s second term, a historical fact that might explain Vance’s eagerness to revive the concept—as an epithet against his factional rivals.
万斯的帖子称，一位民调专家告诉他，不满的特朗普选民——抱歉，是特朗普/万斯选民——如果政府做四件事，就会“回到我们队伍中来”：1）结束战争 2）聚焦生活成本/通胀 3）坚持美国优先 4）改变我们与以色列的关系。
Vance’s post asserts that a pollster told him that disgruntled Trump voters—sorry, Trump/Vance voters—would “come back on our team” if the administration did four things: 1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel.
从一种在网络右翼尤为突出的视角来看，这四件事可归结为一点：特朗普必须停止让以色列操纵他陷入外战，转而专注于让美国人变富。对万斯而言方便的是，特朗普似乎对这种批评持开放态度，他在昨天接受福克斯新闻采访时脱口而出，称他现在倾向于逐步取消对以色列的援助。
From a certain point of view that is especially prominent on the online right, those four things can be reduced to one thing: Trump has to stop letting Israel manipulate him into foreign wars, and instead focus on making Americans rich. Conveniently for Vance, Trump appears open to this critique, having blurted out on Fox News yesterday that he now favors phasing out American aid to Israel.
万斯暗示以色列帮助说服特朗普对伊朗开战，这一点他说得没错。但以色列的游说并不是霍尔木兹海峡被关闭的唯一原因。自1979年人质危机期间伊朗成为美国的眼中钉以来，特朗普就一直时不时主张攻打伊朗——正是在那时，特朗普对世界的那份简短而不变的信念清单初步形成。而在绑架马杜罗让特朗普因权力而飘飘然之后，他似乎也放下了对使用军事力量的顾忌。
Vance is right to imply that Israel helped persuade Trump to go to war with Iran. But Israel’s advocacy is not the only reason the Strait of Hormuz has been closed. Trump has argued on and off for attacking Iran since it emerged as an American bête noir during the hostage crisis that began in 1979, when Trump’s short list of immutable beliefs about the world first formed. Trump also seemed to drop his inhibitions about the use of military force after the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro left him giddy with power.
把本届政府所有国内失败都归咎于伊朗战争，同时微妙地把矛头指向本雅明·内塔尼亚胡，指责他诱骗总统开战，这似乎是万斯维系MAGA联盟团结并保住自身地位的最短、最直接的路径。特朗普的总统任期运转得完全正常，唯一需要做的轻微路线修正，就是重新致力于“美国优先”原则。
Blaming all of the administration’s domestic failures on the Iran war, while subtly pointing the finger at Benjamin Netanyahu for tricking the president into it, would seem to offer Vance the shortest and straightest path to holding together the MAGA coalition and his place within it. The Trump presidency is working perfectly well, and the only slight course correction required is to recommit to “America First” principles.
我们当中谁能带领MAGA运动走进这个没有战争的特朗普主义的新未来？而且既不偏离特朗普军事化的移民策略，也不承认仍在持续的腐败与滥用权力狂欢？只有一个人。
Who among us might lead the MAGA movement into this new future of Trumpism-without-war? And without veering away from Trump’s militarized immigration strategy, or acknowledging the ongoing orgy of corruption and abuse of power? Only one man.